Nearly 100 educators from around the world signed a letter warning that the over-emphasis on testing inspired by PISA was killing the joy of learning. This unelected, unaccountable organization is driving international competition and bad education policies. It is time for parents, educators, students, and researchers to join together and say “Enough is Enough.” Focus on access to education; focus on opportunity to learn; focus on the needs of children, teachers, and schools. But stop with your league tables. Stop the international Race to a mythical top. Let teachers teach. Stop enriching Pearson. Stop the ranking and rating that serves no purpose other than to corrupt education.
Please add your name to the signers of this letter. Here is the link:
An Open Letter: To Andreas Schleicher, OECD, Paris
Heinz-Dieter Meyer and Katie Zahedi, and signatories – 5th May 2014
Dear Dr. Schleicher,
We write to you in your capacity as OECD’s director of the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA). Now in its 13th year, PISA is known around the world as an instrument to rank OECD and non-OECD countries (60+ at last count) according to a measure of academic achievement of 15 year old students in mathematics, science, and reading. Administered every three years, PISA results are anxiously awaited by governments, education ministers, and the editorial boards of newspapers, and are cited authoritatively in countless policy reports. They have begun to deeply influence educational practices in many countries. As a result of PISA, countries are overhauling their education systems in the hopes of improving their rankings. Lack of progress on PISA has led to declarations of crisis and “PISA shock” in many countries, followed by calls for resignations, and far-reaching reforms according to PISA precepts.
We are frankly concerned about the negative consequences of the PISA rankings. These are some of our concerns:
-while standardized testing has been used in many nations for decades (despite serious reservations about its validity and reliability), PISA has contributed to an escalation in such testing and a dramatically increased reliance on quantitative measures. For example, in the United States, PISA has been invoked as a major justification for the recent “Race to the Top” program, which has increased the use of standardized testing for student-, teacher-, and administrator evaluations, which rank and label students, as well as teachers and administrators according to the results of tests widely known to be imperfect (see, for example, Finland’s unexplained decline from the top of the PISA table);
-in education policy, PISA, with its three-year assessment cycle, has caused a shift of attention to short-term fixes designed to help a country quickly climb the rankings, despite research showing that enduring changes in education practice take decades, not a few years to come to fruition. For example, we know that the status of teachers and the prestige of teaching as a profession has a strong influence on the quality of instruction, but that status varies strongly across cultures and is not easily influenced by short-term policy;
-by emphasizing a narrow range of measurable aspects of education, PISA takes attention away from the less measurable or immeasurable educational objectives like physical, moral, civic, and artistic development, thereby dangerously narrowing our collective imagination regarding what education is and ought to be about;
-as an organization of economic development, OECD is naturally biased in favor of the economic role of public schools. But preparing young men and women for gainful employment is not the only, and not even the main goal of public education, which has to prepare students for participation in democratic self-government, moral action, and a life of personal development, growth, and well-being;
-unlike United Nations (UN) organizations such as UNESCO or UNICEF that have clear and legitimate mandates to improve education and the lives of children around the world, OECD has no such mandate. Nor are there, at present, mechanisms of effective democratic participation in its education decision-making process;
-to carry out PISA and a host of follow-up services, OECD has embraced “public-private partnerships” and entered into alliances with multi-national for-profit companies, which stand to gain financially from any deficits—real or perceived—unearthed by PISA. Some of these companies provide educational services to American schools and school districts on a massive, for-profit basis, while also pursuing plans to develop for-profit elementary education in Africa, where OECD is now planning to introduce the PISA program;
-finally, and most importantly: the new PISA regime, with its continuous cycle of global testing, harms our children and impoverishes our classrooms, as it inevitably involves more and longer batteries of multiple-choice testing, more scripted “vendor”-made lessons, and less autonomy for our teachers. In this way PISA has further increased the already high stress-level in our schools, which endangers the well-being of our students and teachers.
These developments are in overt conflict with widely accepted principles of good educational and democratic practice:
-no reform of any consequence should be based on a single narrow measure of quality;
-no reform of any consequence should ignore the important role of non-educational factors, among which a nation’s socio-economic inequality is paramount. In many countries, including the United States, inequality has dramatically increased over the past 15 years, explaining the widening educational gap between rich and poor which education reforms, no matter how sophisticated, are unlikely to redress;
-an organization like OECD, as any organization that deeply affects the life of our communities, should be open to democratic accountability by members of those communities.
We are writing not only to point out deficits and problems. We would also like to offer constructive ideas and suggestions that may help to alleviate the above mentioned concerns. While in no way complete, they illustrate how learning could be improved without the above mentioned negative effects:
-develop alternatives to league tables: explore more meaningful and less easily sensationalized ways of reporting assessment outcomes. For example, comparing developing countries, where 15-year olds are regularly drafted into child labor, with first world countries makes neither educational nor political sense and opens OECD up for charges of educational colonialism;
-make room for participation by the full range of relevant constituents and scholarship: to date, the groups with greatest influence on what and how international learning is assessed are psychometricians, statisticians, and economists. They certainly deserve a seat at the table, but so do many other groups: parents, educators, administrators, community leaders, students, as well as scholars from disciplines like anthropology, sociology, history, philosophy, linguistics, as well as the arts and humanities. What and how we assess the education of 15 year old students should be subject to discussions involving all these groups at local, national, and international levels;
-include national and international organizations in the formulation of assessment methods and standards whose mission goes beyond the economic aspect of public education and which are concerned with the health, human development, well-being and happiness of students and teachers. This would include the above mentioned United Nations organizations, as well as teacher, parent, and administrator associations, to name a few;
-publish the direct and indirect costs of administering PISA so that taxpayers in member countries can gauge alternative uses of the millions of dollars spent on these tests and determine if they want to continue their participation in it;
-welcome oversight by independent international monitoring teams which can observe the administration of PISA from the conception to the execution, so that questions about test format and statistical and scoring procedures can be weighed fairly against charges of bias or unfair comparisons;
-provide detailed accounts regarding the role of private, for-profit companies in the preparation, execution, and follow-up to the tri-annual PISA assessments to avoid the appearance or reality of conflicts of interest;
-slow down the testing juggernaut. To gain time to discuss the issues mentioned here at local, national, and international levels, consider skipping the next PISA cycle. This would give time to incorporate the collective learning that will result from the suggested deliberations in a new and improved assessment model.
We assume that OECD’s PISA experts are motivated by a sincere desire to improve education. But we fail to understand how your organization has become the global arbiter of the means and ends of education around the world. OECD’s narrow focus on standardized testing risks turning learning into drudgery and killing the joy of learning. As PISA has led many governments into an international competition for higher test scores, OECD has assumed the power to shape education policy around the world, with no debate about the necessity or limitations of OECD’s goals. We are deeply concerned that measuring a great diversity of educational traditions and cultures using a single, narrow, biased yardstick could, in the end, do irreparable harm to our schools and our students.
Sincerely,
Heinz-Dieter Meyer Katie Zahedi
State University of New York (SUNY Albany) Principal, Red Hook, New York
Signatories as of May 4, 2014:
Andrews, Paul- Professor of Mathematics Education, Stockholm University
Atkinson, Lori – New York State Allies for Public Education
Baldermann, Ingo, Professor of Protestant Theology and Didactics, Universität Siegen, Germany
Ball, Stephen J. – Karl Mannheim Professor of Sociology of Education, Institute of Education, University of London
Barber, Melissa – Parents Against High Stakes Testing
Beckett, Lori – Winifred Mercier Professor of Teacher Education, Leeds Metropolitan University
Bender, Peter – Professor, Fakulty of Elektrotechnik, Informatik und Mathematik, Universität Paderborn, Germany
Berardi, Jillaine – Linden Avenue Middle School, Assistant Principal
Berliner, David – Regents Professor of Education at Arizona State University
Bloom, Elizabeth – EdD, Associate Professor of Education, Hartwick College
Boland, Neil – Senior Lecturer, AUT University, Auckland, New Zealand
Boudet, Danielle – Oneonta Area for Public Education
Burchardt, Matthias – Academic Council; Society for Education and Knowledge, Vice-Chair, Cologne University, Germany
Burris, Carol – Principal and former Teacher of the Year, Co-Founder of New York Principals.
Cauthen, Nancy – Ph.D., Change the Stakes, NYS Allies for Public Education
Cerrone, Chris – Testing Hurts Kids; NYS Allies for Public Education
Ciaran, Sugrue – Professor, Head of School, School of Education, University College Dublin
Conneely, Claire – Programmes Director, Bridge21, Trinity College Dublin.
Danner, Helmut – Private Docent, Nairobi, Kenya
Deutermann, Jeanette – Founder Long Island Opt Out, Co-founder NYS Allies for Public Education
Devine, Nesta – Associate Professor, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand
Dodge, Arnie – Chair, Department of Educational Leadership, Long Island University
Dodge, Judith – Author, Educational Consultant
Farley, Tim – Principal, Ichabod Crane School; New York State Allies for Public Education.
Fehlmann, Ralph – Coordinator, Forum for General Education, Switzerland
Fellicello, Stacia – Principal, Chambers Elementary School
Fleming, Mary – Lecturer, School of Education, National University of Ireland, Galway
Fransson, Göran – Associate Professor of Education, University of Gävle, Sweden.
Giroux, Henry – Professor of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University
Glass, Gene – Senior Researcher, National Education Policy Center, Santa Fe, NM
Glynn, Kevin – Educator, co-founder of Lace to the Top
Goldstein, Harvey – Professor of Social Statistics, University of Bristol
Gorlewski, David – Director, Educational Leadership Doctoral Program, D’Youville College.
Gorlewski, Julie – PhD, Assistant Professor, State University of New York at New Paltz
Gowie, Cheryl – Professor of Education, Siena College
Greene, Kiersten – Assistant Professor of Literacy, State University of New York at New Paltz
Gruschka, Gruschka – Professor, Educational Sciences, Goethe Universität Frankfurt, Germany
Haimson, Leonie – Parent Advocate and Director of “Class Size Matters”
Hannon, Cliona – Director, Trinity Access Programmes, Trinity College Dublin
Heinz, Manuela – Director of Teaching Practice, School of Education, National University of Ireland Galway
Hoefele, Joachim – Department of Applied Linguistics, University for Applied Sciences, Zurich, Switzerland
Hopmann, Stefan Thomas – Professor, Institute for Educational Sciences, Universität Wien
Hughes, Michelle – Principal, High Meadows Independent School
Jahnke, Thomas – Institute of Mathematics, Universität Potsdam, Germany
Jury, Mark – Chair, Education Department, Siena College
Kahn, Hudson Valley Against Common Core
Kastner, Marie-Theres – President of League of Catholic Parents, Germany
Kayden, Michelle – LOTE Teacher, Linden Avenue Middle School Red Hook, NY
Kempf, Arlo – Program Coordinator of School and Society, OISE, University of Toronto
Kilfoyle, Marla – NBCT, General Manager of BATs
Kissling, Beat – Psychologist and Education Science, Gymnasium and University Instructor, Zürich, Switzerland
Klein, Hans Peter – Chair, Didactics of Bio-Sciences, Goethe Universität Frankfurt
Kraus, Josef – German Teacher Association, President, Germany
Krautz,Jochen – Professor, Department of Art and Design, Bergische Universität Wuppertal
Labaree, David – Professor of Education, Stanford University
Lankau, Ralf – Professor, Media Design, Hochschule Offenburg, Germany
Leonardatos, Harry – Principal, High School, Clarkstown, NY
Liesner, Andreas – Professor, Educational Sciences, Universität Hamburg
Liessmann, Konrad Paul – Professor, Institut für Philosophie, Universität Wien
MacBeath, John – Professor Emeritus, Director of Leadership for Learning, University of Cambridge
McLaren, Peter – Distinguished Professor, Chapman University
McNair, Jessica – Co-founder Opt-Out CNY, parent member NYS Allies for Public Education
Meyer, Heinz-Dieter – Associate Professor, Education Governance & Policy, State University of New York (Albany)
Meyer, Tom – Associate Professor of Secondary Education, State University of New York at New Paltz
Millham, Rosemary – Ph. D., Science Coordinator, Master Teacher Campus Director, SUNY New Paltz
Millham, Rosemary – Science Coordinator/Assistant Professor, Master Teacher Campus Director, State University of New York, New Paltz
Oliveira Andreotti, Vanessa – Canada Research Chair in Race, Inequality, and Global Change, University of British Columbia, Canada
Mitchell, Ken – Lower Hudson Valley Superintendents Council
Mucher, Stephen – Director, Bard Master of Arts in Teaching Program, Los Angeles
Naison, Mark – Professor of African American Studies and History, Fordham University; Co-Founder, Badass Teachers Association
Muench, Richard – Professor of Sociology, Universitaet Bamberg
Nielsen, Kris – Author, Children of the Core
Noddings, Nel – Professor (emerita) Philosophy of Education, Stanford University
Noguera, Pedro – Peter L. Agnew Professor of Education, New York University
Nunez, Isabel – Associate Professor, Concordia University, Chicago
O’Toole-Brennan, Kathleen – Programmes Manager, Trinity Access Programmes, Trinity College Dublin
Pallas, Aaron – Arthur I. Gates Professor of Sociology and Education, Columbia University
Parmentier, Michael – Museum Pedagogy, Göttingen, Germany
Peters, Michael – Professor, University of Waikato, Honorary Fellow, Royal Society New Zealand
Pongratz, Ludwig – Professor, Institute for Pedagogy, Technische Universitaet Darmstadt, Germany
Pugh, Nigel – Principal, Richard R Green High School of Teaching, New York City
Radtke, F.O. – Professor (em), Education Sciences, Goethe-Universitaet Frankfurt
Ravitch, Diane – Research Professor, New York University
Reitz,Tilman – Junior Professor, Sociology, Universitaet Jena
Rekus, Juergen – Institute for Vocational and General Pedagogy, Karlsruhe Institute for Technology (KIT), Germany
Rivera-Wilson, Jerusalem – Senior Faculty Associate and Director of Clinical Training and Field Experiences, University at Albany
Roberts, Peter – Professor, School of Educational Studies and Leadership, University of Canterbury, New Zealand.
Rougle, Eija – Instructor, SUNY Albany
Rudley, Lisa – Director: Education Policy-Autism Action Network
Saltzman, Janet – Science Chair, Physics Teacher, Red Hook High School
Schirlbauer, Alfred – Professor, Institute for Education Sciences, University of Vienna, Austria
Schniedewind, Nancy – Professor of Education, Suny New Paltz
Schopf, Heribert – Professor, School of Pedagogics and Education, Vienna, Austria
Silverberg, Ruth – Associate Professor, College of Staten Island – CUNY
Sperry, Carol – Professor of Education, Emerita, Millersville University
Sjøberg, Svein – Professor (em), Science Education, University of Oslo, Norway
Spring, Joel – Professor, Education Policy, City University of New York
St. John, Edward – Algo D. Henderson Collegiate Professor, University of Michigan
Suzuki, Daiyu – Teachers College at Columbia University / Co-founder Edu 4
Swaffield, Sue – Senior Lecturer, Educational Leadership and School Improvement, University of Cambridge
Tangney, Brendan – Associate Professor, School of Computer Science and Statistics, Trinity College Dublin
Tanis, Bianca – Parent Member: ReThinking Testing
Thomas, Paul – Associate Professor of Education, Furman University
Thrupp, Martin – Professor of Education, University of Waikato
Tobin, KT – Founding member, ReThinking Testing
Tomlinson, Sally – Emeritus Professor, Goldsmiths College, University of London; Senior Research Fellow, Department of Education, Oxford University
Tuck, Eve – Coordinator of Native American Studies, State University of New York at New Paltz
VanSlyke-Briggs, Kjersti – Associate Professor, SUNY Oneonta
Vohns, Andreas – Associate Professor of Mathematics Education, School of Education, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt
Wilson, Elaine – Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge
Wittmann, Erich – Professor of Mathematics Education, Technical University of Dortmund
Wrigley, Terry – Honorary Senior Research Fellow, University of Ballarat, Australia
Zahedi, Katie – Principal, Linden Ave Middle School, Red Hook, New York
Zhao, Yong – Professor of Education, Presidential Chair, University of Oregon
signed
It would seem that PISA (and NAEP) give evidence that the ed reforms in the US, particularly high stakes testing haven’t worked in any positive way.
We only test a sample of students and I haven’t seen schools or teachers rated by these scores.
The problem is the misuse of the data by the media, pundits, Arne Duncan, and a few billionaires.
Even though the data contradicts most of their actions.
It almost seems we’re adding to our own litmus test list for anti-reformers.
“The problem is the misuse of the data by the media, pundits, Arne Duncan, and a few billionaires.”
Right, but one has to protect the legitimacy and credibility of one’s own work. It’s really news to people that politicians and lawmakers with an agenda use numbers to push that agenda?
Who is ultimately responsible for that? What is the point of gathering all these new numbers with these endless tests if the numbers we already gather are used this way? Why would the new numbers be used any differently than the old numbers have been? What’s changed?
I was blown away by the Florida opinion yesterday on VAM not because I have a personal interest in teacher evaluations, but because it goes to credibility. They’re not credible on numbers if they go ahead with that system. It isn’t valid. THEY KNOW it isn’t valid, because it has ridiculous results.
If you present me with a Florida ed stat now, I think “well, those are the people who went ahead with that other ridiculous formula, so who knows what this means?”
It’s like they’re TRYING to impugn their own credibility and make people distrust this stuff. It matters how they use it. It matters because people won’t trust it, and then it’s useless.
Accountability comes in multiple measures and ways of measurement. Responsibility for that accountability falls to leadership at all levels and not to teachers only.
I agree. I’d like to see politicians have to pass the PARCC tests to keep their job.
Signed!
If this impressive international group does not get the attention of the undereducated non-educator-CorporateEdReformer$, very little will. Money is their barometer, and nothing will change until it is no longer profitable for them.
Please resend this letter to as many groups, organizations, politicians, universities, parents, media, super stars……as possible. Someone, somewhere has to come to their senses, soon!
Signed. Excellent letter. I will use it as a text for my language and power seminar in the fall. Any other folks able to use this letter is ed foundations or policy classes?
signed on. Want to use this text in my language and power seminar in the fall. Anyone else able to include it in an ed foundations or ed policy class?
Signed- I have not seen the new signatures show up- I guess they are vetted first.
I’m happy to sign this letter, but it’s annoying to have to go through three different pages to finally get to sign it. Then when you elect not to check (Ms, Mrs. Dr. etc). you get the red message that it’s required.
Why?
I think you should make signing this important letter a smooth process.
I don’t know if any of you follow Democrats v DOE on student loan reform, but it’s heating up:
“This week, two dozen Democratic senators led by Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts introduced a bill that would enable millions of borrowers to refinance expensive student loans at significantly lower interest rates, allowing many to save thousands of dollars a year.
The proposal is a central element of Senate Democrats’ election-year “fair shot” agenda, and enjoys broad support from the party’s leadership. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) expects to bring the legislation to a vote after Memorial Day, forcing Republicans to take an unpopular position if they wish to block the bill.
But it’s not just the Republicans who pose an obstacle. Over the past year, Education Department officials have refused to share critical information with legislators and outside supporters that could have helped shape the legislation. Members of Congress said they have been denied access to information that would determine how many borrowers could benefit from refinancing programs, how much money individual borrowers could save, and the impact of the legislation on the federal budget deficit.
The standoff comes as student advocates grow increasingly frustrated with the Education Department and its leader, Arne Duncan, which they see as key impediments to easing the debt burden on the 40 million Americans who now hold a collective $1.3 trillion in student loans. ”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/07/arne-duncan-student-loans-senate_n_5276211.html?utm_hp_ref=tw
Signed and forwarded it. Thanks for the posting.
Schools should not be a training factory for the next generation of workers. If that is all we want from schools we should only tax the companies that benefit. Under this model, since there is no public benefit, the public should not pay for schools.
Where are our Union leaders’ signatures?
Signed and posted. Thank you.
It so important and such a relief that the PISA-debate that has been going on in various countries has finally led to an international movement of active and outspoken resistance to this overwhelming apparatus of power whose heads see children as no more than human capital. It might well be that Andreas Schleicher and the other PISA stakeholders mean to be acting in the interest of students and states; should this be the case they simply have no idea of the negative impact their approach has on the educational work at schools and – as a consequence of this – on the development of young people and, eventually, on the societies they are living in.
For those who are interested in what is going on in Germany:
The link below connects you with the “GBW” , an association of people in educational professions that was founded in 2010 in opposition to the economization of education. The Open Letter to Mr Schleicher has been published on their site and the list of signatories is getting longer and longer.
http://bildung-wissen.eu/fachbeitraege/nein-zu-pisa-offener-brief-an-andreas-schleicher.html
http://bildung-wissen.eu/fachbeitraege/nein-zu-pisa-offener-brief-an-andreas-schleicher.html
Angelika